SPOTLIGHT: NIU classes resume: 'Nothing's going to be back to normal'

Students at Northern Illinois University walked a little slower Monday, with heads down and hands in their pockets, pausing to gaze at soggy memorials of flowers and faded signs.

Sadie Gurman

Students at Northern Illinois University walked a little slower Monday, with heads down and hands in their pockets, pausing to gaze at soggy memorials of flowers and faded signs.

Amid a fog and stinging drizzle, they trudged to classes for the first time since Feb. 14, when five of their classmates were shot to death in Cole Hall. Most said they were eager to return to schoolwork but feared their once-comfortable campus would never be the same.

The campus was a foreign place where professors devoted lectures to talk of the shootings, counselors were stationed in every class, and police officers and camera crews continued to roam the quiet streets.

“It’s like a piece of campus has been taken from us,” junior Olivia Gabrys said, steeling herself for her 9 a.m. class near a memorial. “You come to a place where you’re supposed to be learning, and there are media and police, and it’s for the wrong reasons.

“Nothing’s going to be back to normal.”

Officers on Monday removed yellow crime scene tape and construction cones from Cole Hall, where gunman Steven Kazmierczak opened fire on Valentine’s Day. But the building remained closed, rerouting thousands of students whose classes are normally held there to other locations.

Sophomore Kaitlynn Sullivan’s anthropology class was moved to an auditorium in the Holmes Student Center. There, she said, her professor discussed the shootings and their aftermath for about 20 minutes before returning to the syllabus. She said it was hard to concentrate.

“I saw a couple people welling up in class,” she said. “Everyone just seems to be on edge.”

Their edginess comes from a fear for their physical and psychological safety combined with a sense of loss that hasn’t faded, said Micky Sharma, director of NIU’s counseling and student development center. Other students, he said, are ready to return to their normal routines.

More than 500 counselors from around the country came to the campus, available in classrooms and residence halls, identifiable by their red arm bands. The counselors will remain at NIU through today. Sharma wasn’t sure how many students had used their services, but he said the number of walk-in counseling appointments tripled Monday.

“Students are at different places (emotionally),” Sharma said. “We’re telling them to honor their emotional response.”

At King Commons, alumni sported Huskies paraphernalia and doled out cookies. Some students tried to lift the mood with posters advertising “free hugs,” an offer many accepted. After his psychology class, senior Jason Knodle said he and fellow students are ready to “get back and get over it.”

He said counselors, some offering doughnuts, and a lecture devoted entirely to the shootings were distractions that didn’t help him much. He also said his class was unusually well attended; some people were standing.

But Gabrys, who returned to the campus early to be near her friends, said sharing her feelings with other students helps.

“I know we have five angels looking over us,” she said. “That also makes it easier.”

Sadie Gurman can be reached at 815-987-1389 or at sgurman@rrstar.com.

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